CONFUSED AT FIRST, YOUNG ADULT NOW COMFORTABLE WITH HER MOTHER'S CHOICE

By making a documentary Meema Spadola helps other kids whose parents are gay.

Many kids don't like to think about their parents' sex lives - especially if their parents are gay.

For Meema Spadola, this subject was on her mind daily as she was growing up. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and soon after she began to wonder about her mother's sexual preference.

Though her mother's decision confused her at first, she is now comfortable with the fact. To help other children going through the same situation, she made a documentary telling of her experiences as well as those of other children of gay parents.

Children's Express recently talked to Meema, 24, by phone from her office in Newark, N.J. Here is her story.

THE DIVORCE

"When I was about 6 years old, my parents moved me and my younger brother up to Maine to the middle of nowhere. It was very, very rural. My dad decided to build a house, so we lived in a tent for a long time, for about six months, and at that point my parents were still together.

"When I was about 10, (my mother) and my father told us that they were splitting up and that my brother and I were going to stay with my dad. I think I must have felt pretty guilty because my mother kept saying to me, `It's not your fault. I just don't love your dad anymore and so I have to leave.'

"I kept saying, `But if you don't love Dad anymore, why don't you come sleep in my room with me?'

"I'd say within about a year after that is when I began to think that maybe she was a lesbian, although I didn't really know a word for it or what it was really. Just somewhere in my mind I thought maybe that's what was going on. But I didn't really have too many people to talk to about it."

FINDING OUT

"(My mom) never really directly told me that she was a lesbian. There was never really a time that she sat me down and said, 'I have something to tell you.'

"Basically, from the moment she told me she was moving out, that was the big issue in my mind. And I was really angry at her. I felt betrayed. I felt it was like, `You are suppose to be my mom and all of a sudden you're taking off?' . . . I was furious with her.

"But when I was 10 years old, I didn't know how to say that or how to feel that really. Because if I were to say, `I hate you,' then I was afraid she'd say, `Fine, I'll never see you again.'

"So there was a long time of just really feeling angry. And you know my brother and I would fight all the time but even more than usual because we were both so angry, but there was nowhere to put out that anger except at each other. . . .

"I remember thinking I knew what a lesbian might be. . . . I thought very much, `Oh, God, they sleep together, they have sex together.' And that was very confusing to me because, just because of my mother being so secretive about it.

"I thought, `Well, if she's secretive about it, it must be something bad.' So I guess I had a lot of negative feelings about it.

"You either deal with it and it teaches you to be strong and self-reliant or you let it be a problem. . . . So I guess it took maybe a year or so to realize first that she was a lesbian and then years until I accepted it.

"I think the fact that my mom is a lesbian just made that sort of more of a possibility for me. And once I got over the whole, you know, feeling of being ashamed and embarrassed, I thought that's an option, too."

FRIENDS' ATTITUDES

"Well, (my friends) knew that my parents had separated and were going through a divorce, and I don't think it ever occurred to them. They just kind of went, `Oh, that's too bad.'

"Then every once in a while, if I really trusted someone, I would say, `I have a really, really big secret to tell you. Do you promise not to tell anyone? Do you promise you won't hate me?'

"They'd go, `Yeah, sure,' and I'd say. `I think my mom is a lesbian.'

"They'd say, `Oh, your mom's pretty.' `But your mom seems nice.' You know, they had all these preconceptions about what it meant to be a lesbian. . . .

"But I didn't really have too many people to talk to about it.

"When I mentioned it to a friend of mine, he was very shocked, told me that my mom was going to go to hell. So for a long time I just tried to keep it a secret and really never talked about it with anyone, and then finally when I was in college I thought maybe now was the time to kind of dig it up and kind of do something about it."

THE DOCUMENTARY

"At first, I was supposed to do it through my job at this documentary company, and my mom said, `No, that's too public. I don't want everyone (to know) that I'm a lesbian.'

"So in my last year of college I thought maybe I'll do it on my own, and I asked her if it was OK and she said that she was ready and I went ahead and made the video.

"I started it in October of '91 and finished it up in May of '92. . . . It was basically low, low budget. . . . I have not spent more than $50 on the whole thing.

"The video is mostly shown at gay and lesbian film festivals, so what that means is that it is reaching an audience of gays and lesbians. I would like it to reach an audience of children of gays and lesbians, because that's who I am and all the people in it are. But there are no festivals for kids of lesbian parents.

"I don't feel like I'm on a crusade or anything.

"I think there are just a lot of preconceptions about what gays and lesbians are like. . . . They think that all gay men walk around with limp wrists and act like sissies and all lesbians are these tough wannabes like men.

"Gays and lesbians are everywhere, and the sooner people learn that, the better."

EDITED BY: Megan White, 14